SPACE Part 1: A long time ago, in a Galaxy far, far into the future…

- By Tim Stewart

My name is Blade, John Blade. Actually, that's a lie, but it would be cool, wouldn't it? My real name is Barry White, I work on the transport ship 'The Gorilla', taking cargo from planet to planet. If not for the constant threat of death, it would be kinda boring.

The Gorilla is a big ugly monstrosity of a ship. Absolutely bottom of the range, no expense has been taken to ensure the safety or comfort of the crew. The cargo hold is huge, but everything is linked by miles of dank, dark corridors.

The ship's engines make it easy to get to sleep, they drone relentlessly, like a lullaby. Well, maybe its just cause I've been on The Gorilla so long, I'm used to it. Except sometimes they start making weird noises, always, seemingly, when I'm trying to sleep. This means that Bong, the ship's mechanic, will drag me out of my bed, (Sometimes while I'm still asleep) to help him fix whatever has gone hideously wrong.

I am the gopher, the lackey, the skivvy. There's someone like me on every ship. Someone who gets to do the dirty work, the boring work, the dangerous work. (Even if I'm not trained for it.)

I handed another spanner-like thing to Bong, and he continued to tighten the thing that needed tightened, all the time telling me what he was doing, under the misapprehension that I was taking any of it in.
Bong acquired his name because of the large quantities of weed he smoked. He was a very popular guy on board, as you can imagine. I didn't know his real name, indeed, I didn't even know if that wasn't his real name. He could have been christened that, and caught the habit trying to live up to it.
The spanner dropped from his grasp, and, somewhat inevitably, it fell into a, well, a hole, the size of a bin, sitting at 45 degrees from the wall.
'Reach in there and grab that thing will ya?' Said Bong.
Shit.
If I reach in, I know there's a good chance my arm won't come back. Bong has a longer reach than me, hell, he's a big guy, as suits his mechanic stereotype. The only reason he won't go for it himself is that he might want to play guitar again.

I looked down the hole, and there's the spanner-thing, jamming a particularly nasty-looking fan from spinning.
I reached in, because it's my job, not from any particular bravery, my fingers touched the spanner, destroying the fine balance between a spanner jamming the fan, and a rapidly spinning fan blade.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing!
The spanner shot up at, oh, roughly 100 miles an hour, and hit me, oh, roughly right between the eyes.

It would have been better if I had been knocked unconscious, but I wasn't. This I found to be particularly unfair, as I was in a big fat hairy world of pain.
Bong brought me to the sickbay. (After he had packed up his tools and had got a can of cola of course. Its not that Bong doesn't like me, well I hope not, but he does adhere to the theory that if you're well enough to scream, you're ok. He must have thought I was very healthy then.)

Sick bay is run by the delectable, and slightly psychotic, Susan, 'Mad' Calevera.
Ok, so 'Mad' lacks finesse as a nickname, but it works. Anyway she is a good doctor, and beautiful to boot. Enough so to convince you that what you really need in a partner is a madwoman who is good with knives.
I am her most frequent visitor. In a way, I don't make too much effort not to get hurt, because it means I get to spend more time with her. I ask you, is this not devotion?

'Can't you be more careful?' She asked, as she always did, as I was pulled onto the table.
'Yes.' I replied.
I insisted on stitches, I got a bandage. I insisted on taking her out to dinner next time we landed, I got a dark look and a threat of castration. I think she's coming around.

It was time for breakfast. I liked breakfast, because I was always hungry by morning.
The Cow was The Gorilla's cook. (Confused yet?) The Cow was a nonsense-nickname, given just to puzzle and annoy him. It didn't really, cause he was such an amiable guy.
'Whassup Cow?' I said, stepping into the mess hall.
'For you? A Cow special. Iced tea with chilli, and chocolate flavour scrambled eggs.'
The Cow would never make me anything normal. I was his sounding board. He gave me some weird new concoction to sample, and if I could keep it down, he added it to the recipe book he was writing, 'Lost in space with a Ladle.'

I was halfway through my scrambled eggs, (quite nice actually) when the loudspeaker came on, calling me to the Cockpit. The Major wanted to see me.
I didn't hurry, because Major Tom Saxon was the one person on board I was sure I didn't like. He took himself too seriously, he was short with people, and he expected everyone to 'do their part'.
When your boss wants everyone to do their part, you can be sure that they don't include themselves in that. Their part is much more of a mystery. Maybe everyone else has to do a little more than their part, negating the need for the boss to do their part.
And he made me clean the lavvies.

Major Tom was waiting for me in the cockpit, he was studying the star-map, pretending to be busy. The pilot, Aska, was there too. She was another person whose real name I didn't know. It was never used.
She was brave, (Although in my opinion, She was Madder than Mad was.) and she obviously had a lot of say in the Major's decisions.
The co-pilot, Phillipe, Had been with us only a week, not long enough to have been assigned a nickname. He was a quiet guy, timid, not very experienced. Aska wasn't pleased at his performance so far, she said he was too cautious to be a pilot.
Also at our little meeting was Blane. He was our military advisor. A nice chap, friendly, helpful, and he kept a dog on board. Anyone who likes dogs is ok in my book. That said, he was a bit handy in a fight, so everyone gave him the proper respect anyway.

I'm just stating folk's secondary roles. The Gorilla is a freelance trading ship after all, and when we get docked, we're all loading cargo and doing deals. Well, except me of course, because I'm the gopher.

'White!' Barked the Major, 'glad you could take the time to see us.'
I sighed, knowing this would piss him off. It did, his eyebrows joined, always a bad sign.
'We've got a little job for you.' He said darkly.
No surprise there, my life is spent doing little jobs, which turn out to be big jobs, as you will see.
'Remember last week when we crashed on takeoff at Marie Harbour?' He said, ceasing to throw dark looks at me long enough to shoot a dark look at Phillipe.
Of course I remembered, I spent three cramped days crawling through ducts, pumping out water, welding steel plates over leaks, and all without food or sleep. It was a very potent vision of hell.
Of course, at this point I knew I was going to be ordered to go back, because it was exactly what I never wanted to do again.
'We need you to go back down there.'
Damn.
'Yes, it seems we've picked up a hitchhiker,' He said, his tone getting annoyingly cheery. 'Scanners detect another life form on board, and you know we can't allow that. It's a potential risk to the life of everyone on board. We want you to go down there, find it, and kill it… Any questions?'
How about, why the fuck can't you go down you big chicken-shit? That was one of the first to pop into my head, but I don't ask such questions. If I did, I wouldn't be me.
'What equipment do I get?' I asked.
Blane spoke now, looking a little regretful for what I was going to have to do. 'Well, We cant give you a gun, because you could puncture the hull and kill us all, and apparently the gravity generator isn't working in some areas, so it wouldn't be any use in those… All we can really give you is a knife and a flashlight, but don't worry, we'll be monitoring you from here.'
Gee, thanks. What if I'm stuck in a twisty maze with some ten-legged ass-kicking machine? Who knows what we picked up? I had one more question…
'Can I have some food this time?'

Blane, Cow, Bong, and, to my delight, Susan came to see me off. I felt like this would be the last time I would see them. Cow gave me a lunchbox; Bong lent some moral support, ('Bye bye, dead man.') Blane gave me my knife, a torch, and a radio headset. I wanted to say something brave and witty, although I couldn't think of anything. I especially wanted to say something to Susan.
The hatch was opened, it was pitch black inside, and a rush of cold air came out. This did not look good.
I Went to the hatch and started down the ladder. My mind was still racing trying to find something to say to Susan.
'Err,' I said, 'Susan?'
'Yeah?' She said.
'Get the bandages ready.' I said, and descended.

Fuck.
What sort of thing was that to say? I could have done better than that. I decided to press on and not think about it. I reached the bottom of the ladder, and crouched down to crawl into the vent.

It was bloody cold. That was my first impression. It was also bloody dark, but I had my torch, so I could concentrate on how bloody cold it was. The vent was quite large, big enough to sit up in without touching my head off the ceiling. This wasn't very comforting, because I knew from experience that they got very tight in places.

And so I crawled on, for hours, searching for some sign of life. At first I was fine, but I soon got claustrophobic. Every half an hour, Blane would call in on the radio and ask how I was doing. It didn't take me long to discover that the 'send' button on my headset was broken. Damn bloody damn.
Soon I was starting to panic. I imagined the alien monstrosity that could have been creeping up behind me. I was constantly looking back, scared out of my wits, then imagining the thing could be right in front of me.
Hour three came and I came to one of the areas where the gravity wasn't working. Evidently, not all of the water had been pumped out. Bubbles of water floated through the air, breaking up as I passed though. One huge long bubble kept me entertained for many minutes. A tiny fish was swimming about in the middle of it.
And then it hit me.

This was what I had been sent down here for? I nearly screamed.
Potential risk to the life of my ASS. There was more dangerous life between the Major's toes than down here. I was gonna go back and tip him a new asshole, and then I heard the hissing.
I froze, my blood running cold. I looked around quickly, trying not to turn upside down. I listened. Silence. My mind replayed the sound, trying to convince me that it was just a pipe or something. My heart didn't agree. It was the only thing I could hear now.

Hisssssssss…. The sound came again.
That was no fucking pipe. My hair felt like it was trying to leave my body it was standing on end so much.
It was close. I spun around and around, trying to see what was coming. I turned around one last time, and there it was. I jumped like I had been shot as soon as I saw it, hitting my head on something sharp on the ceiling, (or maybe floor) of the vent.
It was small consolation that as soon as I did, I saw the creature clearly for the first time. It was truly inhuman. It was a cat.

I felt dizzy; I felt blood running down the back of my neck from where I had hit my head.
All I could think was, 'Shit, I've just been killed by a cat.'
Blane's voice came over the intercom. 'How's it going Barry?'
'I…It's a cat!' I blurted, before passing out.

One relief was that I woke up in sickbay, good for many reasons. My head hurt, but hey, that's nothing new. I was alive, and out of the air vents.
And in walked Susan. My heart went yippee. She sat down beside my bed. Yippee!
'How are you feeling?' She said, almost kindly.
Alarm bells started ringing.
'Fine, a bit sore, but fine.'
'That's good.'
'How did I get here?' I asked.
'Well,' She replied, 'When you passed out, we had to come and get you, but when we found you…' She paused. My blood ran cold again, (Hey, it was getting good at it.) Susan never paused, and never spoke kindly.
'Well,' She continued, 'the cat was obviously very hungry… And, well, there's no easy way to say this, but…' She drew back the cover where my right hand was lying, or so I thought. It was gone.
'We had to amputate, Fluffy had already chewed off two fingers, and the rest was infected.'
I looked at the stump, my head thumping, nearly hyperventilating. All I could manage was, 'F… F… Fluffy?'
'Yes!' Said Susan, in a sunny mood all of a sudden. She reached down and picked up the cat, and held it up close to my face.
'She's doing much better, you'll be glad to know!' Said Susan, smiling happily.
The cat fixed me with its evil green-eyed stare. It licked its lips slowly, as if saying, 'Barry mate, the hand was just the beginning.'
I screamed and screamed until I passed out. (Hey, I was getting good at it.)

end of part one

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